


Keeping it Close to the Vest

by angstbot



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Swen, swan queen - Fandom
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 00:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20497982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstbot/pseuds/angstbot
Summary: Emma gets cursed and Regina doesn't think she can break it.





	Keeping it Close to the Vest

**Author's Note:**

> There's a Robin warning for this one, but he's a villain and is only in two scenes. 
> 
> Prompt: "I thought you loved her.”

“Oops,” Emma said, unnecessarily. A moment ago, they had been in Storybrooke, but now they were in a space that was gray as far as the eye could see, the ground and the sky barely distinguishable. It looked almost unfinished.

“You think?” Regina snapped. “How many times have I told you not to touch magical artifacts you don’t understand?”

“How was I supposed to know that it was magical?!” Emma shot back.

“It’s a glowing stone arrow! How could you think anything else?!”

The sound of a throat clearing behind them had Regina whirling around.

Her heart gave a painful twinge when she saw who it was. “Robin?”

“So good to see you again, Regina.” There was an edge to his voice that she didn’t remember.

“But you’re dead,” Emma pointed out.

Regina was mortified. “Emma, hush.”

“I’m sorry, but it matters.” Emma stepped forward, confrontational. “Are we dead?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

“Emma, don’t badger him.”

“It’s alright, Regina. It’s important that you know. This place is- in between. Which is why I can get here and you can get here, with a little magical help.” He tipped his head at the arrow Emma still held in her hand, and Regina felt oddly vindicated. “But you two getting out again would take some rather extraordinary magic.”

“No biggie,” Emma said, the casualness of her shrug at odds with how she was still staring him down. Had she always disliked him so much? “We’ve got extraordinary magic together.”

“Yes, well fortunately there’s a plan for that.”

“What-” Emma started to ask. Then the stone arrow she was still holding glowed so brightly Regina threw her hand up in front of her eyes reflexively. When she looked again, Emma had crumpled to the strange gray ground.

“Emma!” Immediately, she ran and knelt by her. She was completely unresponsive, breathing but completely unconscious. Almost like she was-

“Yes, she’s cursed.” Robin’s smile at her startled look was deeply unpleasant. He shrugged. “The dead can hear the thoughts of the living.”

“What’s going on? Why are you being so- awful? This isn’t like you.” Regina was starting to get angry now. She arranged Emma into a more comfortable position and got up to face him.

“The dead can hear the thoughts of the living.”

“You said that. What’s your point?” Her tone was sharp now.

“My point, dear Regina, is that the second I died I learned that you didn’t really love me.”

“I did- I mean, I do-”

“Not the way you love her.”

“What- I- no-” she blurted. She didn’t want to think about how intense her need to deny that was.

“You can’t lie to me.”

She straightened her back and looked him dead in the eye. “Yes, I care about Emma. But it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Doesn’t it? It always felt like you were just going through the motions, trying to do what you thought you should. I thought that you just weren’t a very affectionate person. Evil Queen and all that. And that was fine. The sex was good and that was enough.”

Regina immediately clamped down on her thought that it hadn’t actually been good.

Apparently, Robin was too busy talking to listen in on her thoughts, because he kept going. “But once I could see inside your heart and how deeply you can love?” His voice hardened. “I’m your soulmate. I deserved that. Not her. She doesn’t deserve you.”

The insult to Emma had her seeing red. “The hell she doesn’t. She’s twice the hero you ever were.”

“Well your precious savior isn’t going to save you now. You can’t get out of here without both of your magic, and,” he tipped his head at Emma, “she’s cursed. So now you get to spend eternity stuck here knowing she led you to destruction.”

All Regina could think to do was take a swing at him. Her fist passed through his incorporeal face, and he laughed.

“Fine, stay here by yourself with your unconscious girlfriend for a while until you can be more pleasant company.”

“She’s not my-” Regina protested, but he vanished. She turned back to Emma, kneeling down to check her again. She was still alive, but also still completely beyond her ability to help. Fingers resting indulgently on Emma’s neck where she’d felt for a pulse, Regina sighed. “Emma, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. If I didn’t-” But even now, with absolutely no one to hear, she couldn’t say out loud. “If it wasn’t for me, he would never have targeted you.”

Suddenly, she couldn’t bear to look at Emma knowing that she’d done this to her. She pulled away quickly and sat down with her back to her. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she tried very hard not to feel sorry for herself.

**

Sweating, breathing hard, Regina tried one more time, channeling every bit of magic she could find to try to feel her way through the realms, using a rock she’d found caught in the tread of Emma’s boot as an anchor for the locator spell.

It felt like the fabric of the universe was parting for her, just a little, even though it was like pushing through rubber. She felt a surge of elation.

Then the fabric of the universe pushed back in an overwhelming wall of magic.

**

When she came to, after she had stopped feeling dizzy and gotten up and stomped around for a while, Regina realized that she might be overlooking something here in this world. Too worn out from her earlier attempts at a portal to be able to move Emma along with her, she instead walked in circles around her, spiraling outward, looking at the ground and the sky and, again and again, back at Emma to be sure she was still there—if not fine, then at least unchanged.

But everywhere she went was exactly the same. There was no sense of movement toward the horizon. There was no difference in the ground under her feet. There was no sun or moon or stars to orient her. It was all just gray, a little darker underfoot than overhead.

Just at the point that she was going to lose sight of Emma, she had to admit that this wasn’t helping anything. But accepting it didn’t make her not curse up a storm all the way back.

**

The upside of being completely alone except for an unconscious Emma in a place that was no place was that there was no one there to see that she broke down in self pity and cried for a good long while.

**

When, eventually, she was spent, Regina wiped her face and took a deep breath and realized she was hungry. As she was sighing and shaking her head at her bad luck, the red leather of Emma’s jacket caught her eye. Emma usually had a granola bar tucked in her jacket somewhere. At least, she’d produced them from its pockets for Regina on several occasions. For a moment she felt uneasy, as if it was violating Emma’s privacy to rifle through her pockets for a snack.

Then she realized that starving herself wasn’t going to help her think clearly or get them back. So, carefully so as to not touch Emma in any way she shouldn’t, she pulled the jacket open to search the breast pockets.

The first one came up empty, though it was distractingly warm from Emma’s body heat.

The second one had a clear bulge in it when Regina flipped the jacket’s other side back, but when she put her hand in it the object was clearly metal. Mastering her disappointment, she pulled it out anyway.

A compact? That didn’t seem like Emma. But she opened it and it was, complete with a mirror. Regina saw that her eye makeup had not really held up to her earlier tears. Just as she was going to gesture to fix it, she gasped.

A mirror.

This was it! She took a long, slow breath to steady herself. Then she felt around for her magic, trying to see if she had recovered enough from her earlier exertions. She closed her eyes in relief when she realized she was back up to full strength, then cast the spell that would let her talk through the mirror, and as much as she was dreading it, there was only one choice.

“Show me Zelena.”

Regina briefly saw her own house’s foyer before her sister came into view.

“Zelena!”

Zelena squeaked in surprise, then turned to face the mirror, grasping at her chest dramatically. “You can’t just sneak up on people like that, Regina.”

Regina suppressed her irritation, but she did get up to pace. “I’m sorry, but I’m kind of in a situation-”

“And where have you been? I picked up Henry from school for you but good lord, that boy must have a hollow leg the way he eats. I’m not going to keep cooking all day.”

“Zelena-”

But she was on a roll now. “And where is that blasted sheriff? Her mother has called here at least four times and I don’t know why she’s my responsibility-”

Regina was never going to get a word in edgewise at this rate. “Zelena!”

“What?!” her sister snapped right back.

“Can you listen for two seconds?!”

“Oh sure, no care for my concerns,” Zelena muttered, but then she subsided and looked expectantly at Regina.

Regina took a deep breath. “Emma and I are trapped.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. It’s,” she paused, shaking her head, “not like anywhere I’ve ever been. Everything is gray and it’s impossible to travel any distance.”

“It sounds like you’re in the space between realms. Nasty stuff, but the two of you should be powerful enough to open a portal back without any problem.” Zelena waved a dismissive hand.

“That’s just the thing. Emma is-”

“Mom!” Henry came into the frame of the mirror at Zelena’s shoulder. “I thought I heard you. Where are you? Did you say Ma is with you? What’s going on?”

“Well-”

“Your mother is trapped in another realm.”

“Zelena!” she hissed.

“Right.” Zelena’s voice became falsely cheery and singsong like she was talking to a toddler. “But it’s fine because she and your other mother make big magic together all the time and they can get back.”

Regina winced. “Not- exactly.”

“Why not?” Henry asked.

He looked so innocent, and she wished there was a way to say this without worrying him. “Your mother is cursed.”

Surprisingly, he seemed totally unfazed. “So un-curse her.”

“It’s not like being asleep, Henry.”

“I know!” He scowled, and she was reminded that he’d actually been cursed because of her, just like Emma. The guilt was suffocating. “But you can just kiss her.” It sounded like the simplest thing in the world when he said it.

“No, I can’t.”

His brow furrowed. “But I thought you loved her.”

There was no help for it. She was caught. Did everyone know? “I do,” she sighed. “But sometimes that’s not enough.”

“Yes it is! True love is the most powerful magic of all.” He was so sure of it.

“It doesn’t matter how I feel if Emma doesn’t love me back.” There. She’d said it out loud. “True love has to be shared. It won’t work.”

“Oh Regina, you _are_ thick.”

“Zelena, for once in your life can you help me without mockery?”

“Well, no, and especially not when you’re being an idiot.” Zelena chuckled. “Regina, you can’t possibly think Emma doesn’t love you.”

“She might care about me, but it’s not love.”

“Idiot,” Zelena said again. And Henry was nodding along.

“This is ridiculous,” Regina grumbled.

Zelena quirked an eyebrow. “If you’re so sure you’re right, there’s no harm in kissing her.”

“I’m not kissing her while she’s unconscious!”

“And it won’t work anyway,” came a voice from behind her.

Turning, she saw that Robin was back. “There’s no sense in trying,” he went on.

“See?” Regina said to the mirror.

“Who is that?” Henry said, craning to see as if the mirror on his end would show him more.

“Robin.”

“What’s he doing there?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “Apparently he’s trying to get revenge on me. But it doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does!” Henry was almost bouncing now. “He’s telling you not to kiss her! You don’t think that’s suspicious?”

“Well-”

“I’m just telling the truth,” Robin said. “If it hurts, so much the better.”

“The kid is right,” Zelena put in. “Your local apparition over there is clearly trying to keep you from waking her.”

“I don’t-”

“Just try,” Zelena said, her voice serious now. “You can always say I told you so. I know how you enjoy that.”

“Well, alright.” It wasn’t like there was much else to try.

“No!” Robin shouted.

“See?” Zelena said.

Regina stared hard at Robin for a long moment. Then she flung herself at Emma, scraping her hands on the ground as she caught herself on all fours above her, hesitating for just a split second before leaning all the way in for a kiss.

Robin was grabbing at her, trying to pull her away even though his hands just passed through her like an icy breeze, but it was too late. She felt a pulse of magic.

“R’gina?” Emma slurred, her eyes blinking open.

“Emma,” she breathed, overcome.

“Wuz goin’ on?”

“You love me.” Regina knew her smile was silly.

“Well, yeah, but- um- why am I on the ground?”

“Oh, uh, Robin cursed you.” The guilt washed over her again.

“That fucker,” Emma growled. “Why did you even date him?”

“I didn’t know I had a better option,” she admitted.

“I’m right here, you know.”

“Yes, you are,” Regina said, reluctantly pulling away from Emma and standing to face him. In her peripheral vision, she could see Emma standing up too, taking her place beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and it was both so familiar from all the threats they’d faced down before and wonderfully new, knowing what she knew now.

She took a deep breath and turned the full force of her rage on Robin. “You’re going to leave us alone.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really. I don’t know what you were trying to accomplish with this little plot, but it clearly didn’t work.”

“You’re mine!”

“The hell I am! You can’t just _claim_ me.”

His outline seemed to waver a bit. “But- you’re my soulmate.”

“That doesn’t make me your property,” she snapped. “I chose you, once, because I thought you were right for me. But you weren’t then and you’re certainly not now.”

“But- it’s fate?” He was definitely fainter now.

“I make my own fate. And it will never, never again be you.”

“No!” he cried, but as he did, he vanished.

“You think he’s gone for good?” Emma asked after a long moment.

“I hope so. But,” she admitted. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s go home?”

“Home,” Regina breathed, struck hard by the idea of home and _Emma_.

Emma cocked her head at her in confusion. “Yeah, we can make a portal together, right?”

“Right,” Regina breathed. She swallowed hard and then held out her hand, palm up. Emma took it, and it was far more electric than it had any right to be.

“Follow my lead,” she said.

“Anywhere you want,” Emma said with a grin that made Regina’s stomach do a little flip.

Regina took the stone out of her pocket and concentrated on Storybrooke. When she said, “Okay, _now_,” the surge of magic was intense. But with Emma’s help, and the stone, she could focus it. In just a few moments they could see through the portal into Regina’s living room. The second she was sure it was stable, Regina stepped forward, pulling Emma with her. In no time, they were in her house, the portal winking out behind them.

“It’s very rude to hang up on someone in the middle of a call.” Turning, she saw Zelena standing in the doorway, arms crossed.

**

It took quite a while to calm everyone down. Zelena was easy enough, though Regina had a feeling she’d be calling in favors over this for a long time. Henry had been much more worried, but was excited enough about True Love’s Kiss to let it go. But Snow was in hysterics for an hour, and it was all Regina could do to keep from strangling her.

Eventually, it was all worked out, and when Snow went home and Henry and Zelena went to bed she and Emma were left alone for the first time since she had realized her love for the savior was mutual.

“Hey,” Emma said.

“Hey,” she said, startled.

They looked at each other for a long moment before Emma blurted, “So you really didn’t know I love you?”

“No, of course not.”

Emma sighed. “Regina, I risked my soul for you.”

“But you’re the savior.”

“And I spent months worrying about whether you were happy.” When Regina opened her mouth to object, she sighed, “The savior again, right. I keep granola bars in my jacket because I know you get cranky when you’re hungry.”

“You do?” Regina’s heart felt impossibly full. That was for her?

“Yeah.” Emma fell silent for a moment. “So, about that kiss.”

“I’m sorry. I should never have kissed you when you were unconscious, but-”

“Regina-”

“It was kind of an emergency, and-”

“Regina!”

“What?!” she snapped back.

“I was hoping we could do it again now that I’m awake to appreciate it.”

“Oh.”

“Would that be okay?”

Regina felt a slow smile spread across her face, and she nodded. Emma reached up and cupped her face in her hands, smiling right back at her. Then she leaned in, slowly, as if giving her a chance to back out. But she wasn’t going anywhere. When Emma’s lips met hers, it was affectionate, almost chaste at first. Very soon it took on a bit more intensity, becoming slow and deep, but still sweet. When their tongues met, it sent a jolt of heat through Regina, and from the way Emma pressed their bodies closer together, she felt it too. Regina’s hands were wandering now, over Emma’s back and down to her hips to pull her even closer and back up to cup the back of her neck, and Emma was doing much the same, lingering on her ass.

She was just becoming tempted to demand that Emma take her to bed right now when the blonde broke the kiss, but she didn’t go any farther than leaning their foreheads together.

“I should go before I do something I shouldn’t,” she murmured.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to take you on a date first. You know, before we- Maybe that’s silly and old fashioned, but-”

“No, it’s romantic. And perfect. And,” she sighed, “we really have to do it tomorrow because I don’t want to wait any longer than that.”

Emma chuckled. “Me neither. You got it.”


End file.
